That's So Cozy And Cute. Thanks For The Answer!

That's so cozy and cute. Thanks for the answer!

Imagine Gale showing Tav his favourite coffeeshop in Waterdeep. How would it look like?

oh my god okay so i actually have an answer for this and if you'll forgive me it's a little self indulgent

so i keep having this recurring dream, right? it's in this city full of spires and gorgeous architecture. it's always the middle of the night, there are always so many stars, i assume due to magic. it's a hot chocolate shop.

every time i have this dream, the shop changes location. it's never in the same place twice, but it's always in a little nook somewhere, down an alleyway.

each time, the proprietor is different. always friendly and calm, always wanting to talk. i am always without fail the only person in the shop, and it became clear after several nights with this dream, it's because it exists for me. it's always cosy inside, with dark wood and candles and plush seating. the serving cups change with every visit. the kind of chocolate changes, too.

when i am feeling especially stressed or scared, i have this dream, and i have somewhere i can go to cradle a hot cup of cocoa and talk to someone kind.

and i think gale would love that. a hot chocolate shop you can only go to via astral projection, unique to the spellcaster, with a kind gentle soul waiting to unburden your troubles and give you a place of calm and peace.

Professor Dekarios - In The Field 🪶 (2/3)

Mr Dekarios! Heavens, fancy seeing you here!

Another lore post!

a quick note on elven maturity

all right. time for another lore dump, brought to you by a big DnD fangirl.

so i see a lot of conversation around Astarion's age at the time of being turned (39 years old) and how, in DnD, that would make him a "child." this comes from rules and lore that state that elves can live to be about 750 years old (or older) and are considered adults at 100 years old. and i can absolutely see why that is confusing, but let me break it down a bit.

Elves reach physical maturity at the same age as humans, but after that point, their aging slows down tremendously. a 39 year old elf may be "considered a child" but has the physical maturity of a human in their 20s and mental maturity of a 39 year old human.

so let's talk about that "considered a child" business. this might be cleared up by adding the caveat "by other elves" at the end.

the distinction of "childhood" is cultural. because elves live so long, they see those under the age of 100 as youthful. think about it: if you had seen five hundred years of shit, you'd think an 80 year old was a sweet summer child, too. hell, i'm in my 30s and sometimes it's hard not to look at people in their early 20s as "kids" because we're just in such different places in our lives, even though they are legally adults.

even in the real world, maturity and adulthood are seen differently across cultures. different countries have different drinking ages, different ages for driving cars, different ages of consent. those standards may seem odd to an outsider, used to their own cultural norms, but every community is different.

elves don't just see other elves under age 100 as children. they see other races this way as well. high elves tend to view humans as immature - even in their old age - because 80 years to them is nothing.

i was a legal adult at 18, but 18 year old me didn't know half the shit 33 year old me does. and i'm sure 45 year old me will think 33 year old me was "young" by comparison.

now, i've seen some takes that Astarion might be lying about being a magistrate because he was "a child" and why would they make a child a magistrate? that argument might hold up in an elven dominated city, but Baldur's Gate is mostly human. by human standards, Astarion had the same mental capacity as any other 39 year old man.

Astarion, at age 39, may have been seen as a "child" by other high elves, but this isn't literal. it merely means he had yet to reach a major cultural milestone of a very, very long lived race. a milestone even the most elderly of humans likely will never reach.

would you call an 80 year old human a child? no. but a high elf very well might see them that way. not in the physical sense, but in a "oh to be young and naive and know less of the world than I do" sense. the way that we all inevitably look at those a decade younger than us, even though they are adults, and see their youth in comparison to our own.

it's 5am here and i'm babbling. the point is, the "child" bit of elven lore in DnD is confusing, i get it. but it's purely cultural. in Baldur's Gate, a city primarily run by humans, Astarion was not seen as a child by most. he was a grown man. he had the mental maturity of a 39 year old man. the only people who would have seen him as a child are other, older high elves (mostly those who grew up in a place like Evermeet) and maybe elders of other races - even humans - who were like "oh, to be 39 again!" (lol, me the day i turn 40 probably.)

tl;dr elves in dnd are not LITERALLY children until they turn 100. it's an elven culture thing, similar to how in real life different cultures have different standards for things like driving, drinking, joining the army, and age of consent.

i am romancing gale for a third time since i have fallen under his spell. and i love the change in gale greeting after the weave scene, he seems so delighted to talk to Tav. i also love making him slightly flustered after flirting with him at the tiefling party.

Hello, darling anon! I'm so sorry I needed so long to reply--as it turns out, sitting down is not the most comfy thing for me to do at the moment. (This is tragic because sloth is absolutely my cardinal sin.)

One thing that is so lovely and heartbreaking about Gale's early, friendly greetings to Tav is that Gale seems to be a person who thrives on close connections, whether those connections are platonic or romantic. And it's so terrible because, as we know from his dialogue, he doesn't really have friends! He has colleagues, Mystra (NOT A FRIEND), and Elminster (more a mentor/father figure who can't be bothered to tell Gale about Mystra's orders in person.) For friends he has Tara and the magma mephit, and eventually Tav and the rest of the crew, and finally, in the epilogue, he can talk about his friends at the Yawning Portal.

(ADHD parenthetical: regarding Elminster, I honestly sometimes feel like--despite Elminster's affection for Gale--the friendship is largely one-sided. Elminster likes and maybe even loves Gale, but I'm not entirely sure if that can best be described as friendship per se. Just as Gale completely misunderstands his relationship with Mystra as being one of reciprocal, romantic love, I think he might also not view his friendship with Elminster in the same way Elminster does his relationship with Gale. Anyway.)

(ADHD parenthetical 2: I headcanon that some of Gale's Yawning Portal friends include the drow, dragonborn, and cleric of Cyric from his Act 1 story in the Grove if you rescue Sazza. They probably looked at the weird-ass wizard who'd just loudly bought a round for the entire bar and the dragonborn decided they were going to adopt him.)

Okay, for real this time, one of the unending, bullshitty complaints about Gale is that he loves to hear himself talk and never shuts up, and while he does love to yap, his greetings also make it very clear he wants to hear what you have to say! He asks you what's on your mind, he tells you that he enjoys your conversations (even if you've exhausted literally all his dialogue and there's nothing new to talk about), he asks you to tell him anything you're worried about because "you can always unburden yourself with me." He asks you if you need him for anything. HE WANTS TO HEAR FROM YOU!!!! We often interpret those lines as Gale always wanting to be helpful and of service, but they also point to his eagerness to communicate and talk, his desire to hear whatever his partner has to say.

Those lines make me wish we had so much more dialogue with Gale, whether about his past or the current situation, or if there are shared interests (maybe dialogue specific to spellcasters) or even different ones. Or maybe a chance for Tav to say they're really worried, or are exhausted from having to go from calamity to calamity, and Gale comforts them because, well, he's ever the optimist.